Round table discussions

Our Expert Panel is an opinionated group on a wide variety of topics, and we are dedicated to providing a useful and flexible forum to share those opinions. This week, our panelists address a range of opinions about several self-selected topics, culled from the large number of Expert Panelist responses we have collected in the last year. In this Expert Panel Roundtable article, we will share these varied and insightful responses to ensure they are not lost to posterity!

Ethical hackers are familiar to the world of cybersecurity. As cybersecurity awareness increases in physical security, they are also playing a larger role to ensure the safety of networked and information technologies used in our market. We asked this week’s Expert Panel Roundtable: What is the role of ‘ethical hackers’ to ensure cybersecurity of networked products in the physical security market?

When security topics become a part of current events, it is usually in a negative light. Security generally only becomes news when it fails, sometimes in a dramatic, high profile and tragic way. However, security failures can also shed light on lessons learned and opportunities to improve. Working toward better security can translate into the purchase of more goods and equipment supplied by our market. For additional insights into the intersection of security and current events, we asked this we...

The security industry is full of individuals who call themselves consultants. It’s a term that is thrown around rather loosely, and in some situations the term can be roughly translated as “between jobs.” But “real” consultants provide real value to their clients in a variety of subject matter specialties. We asked this week’s Expert Panel Roundtable: What role should consultants play in the security technology buying decision?

A basic tenet of sales is ABC – always be closing. But it's a principle that most professional salespeople would say oversimplifies the process. Especially in a sophisticated, high-tech market such as physical security, the required sales skills are much more involved and nuanced. We asked this week's Expert Panel Roundtable: What unique characteristics are required of salespeople in the arena of physical security systems?

The year ahead holds endless promise for the physical security industry, and much of that future will be determined by which technologies the industry embraces. The menu of possibilities is long – from artificial intelligence to the Internet of Things to the cloud and much more – and each technology trend has the potential to transform the market in its own way. We tapped into the collective expertise of our Expert Panel Roundtable to answer this question: What technology trend will...

Cybersecurity continues to be a major theme in the physical security industry, but effective cybersecurity comes at a cost. Higher cost is contrary to another major trend in the market: lower product pricing, which some have characterised as a ‘race to the bottom’. Chinese manufacturers, whose products tend to have lower prices, have been the target of cybersecurity concerns and even a government ban. So what is the overall impact of cybersecurity on pricing trends in video products?...

The new year 2019 is brimming with possibilities for the physical security industry, but will those possibilities prove to be good news or bad news for our market? Inevitably, it will be a combination of good and bad, but how much good and how bad? We wanted to check the temperature of the industry as it relates to expectations for the new year, so we asked this week’s Expert Panel Roundtable: How optimistic is your outlook for the physical security industry in 2019? Why?

In many regards, 2018 was a turbulent year for the physical security marketplace, driven by evolving technologies and changing customer needs, among other factors. Year-end is a great time to reflect, so we asked our Expert Panel Roundtable: What caused the most disruption in the physical security marketplace in 2018? 

Employee turnover is a problem for many companies, especially among younger employees who have not developed the philosophy of employer loyalty that was common in previous generations. Nowadays, changing jobs is the norm. The idea of spending decades working for a single employer seems almost quaint in today’s economy. However, excessive employee turnover can be expensive for employers, who are looking for ways to keep their brightest and best employees happily toiling away as long as poss...

The concept of how security systems can contribute to the broader business goals of a company is not new. It seems we have been talking about benefits of security systems beyond “just” security for more than a decade. Given the expanding role of technologies in the market, including video and access control, at what point is the term “security” too restrictive to accurately describe what our industry does? We asked the Expert Panel Roundtable for their responses to this p...

In today’s global economy, goods are manufactured all over the world and shipped to customers thousands of miles away. Where goods are manufactured thus becomes a mere detail. However, in the case of “Made in China”, the location of a manufacturer has become more high-profile and possibly more urgent. The U.S. government recently banned the use in government installations of video system components from two Chinese manufacturers, presumably because of cybersecurity concerns. A...